Category Archives: Colours

The base Elements of reality, or of mystical power, vary greatly between settings. In the real world their number is undefined (if we look at chemical elements they become increasingly shortlived as we go down the periodic table, with many being incapable of chemical interactions due to their tiny half-lives, while if we look at fundamental particles the list is incomplete and uncertain), but most settings that make use of them limit them rather more strictly – having them be well-understood phenomenon with a very definite list.

The Classical Elements

All can agree that Fire, Earth, Air and Water are classical elements, but there is commonly a fifth – Spirit, Void or Aether – representing things that are truly immaterial and cannot be felt in any way.

Looking at them in order of the complexity of assigning a colour to them:

Fire is always red.

Although the knowledge of white-hot flames is old, red fires were, and still are, by far the most common to encounter, with white flames requiring significant active effort to maintain in a forge or furnace.

Original Dungeons and Dragons made it easy to tell which elves are the Evil ones – they’re the Drow, the ones with the coal black skin. Whilst this might have been more socially acceptable in the 1970’s when the first edition was published, most modern gamers tend to shy away from that specific form – even those who are otherwise happy to have “evil races” be easily distinguished by their form.

It might seem useful to backtrack the appearance of elves from DnD back to Middle-Earth, and so to the mythic originals from which Tolkien drew his inspiration. Unfortunately it’s not. The Norse sagas have two kind of ‘elf’ – the lios-alfar, which are your basic elves, and the svart-alfar, which are dwarves. Arguably the Vana might be the inspiration for the High Elves, but the distinction between Quenya and Sindarian is largely linguistic rather than genetic, and the Vana are more close kin to the Aesir (both are Norse gods) than the Alfar (who are just elves), so I’m guessing not so much.

Dragons! Huge beasts with bright red scales! Or is that green? What, maybe they’re golden? Hold on, they’re four-legged serpent-like creatures with feathers…
Dragon is an evocative word, and there is no doubt dragons come in a variety of shapes and colours in myth. From the battling red and white Dragons which fell castles in Welsh myth, to the symbol of the emperor in Chinese history – the one things they all have in common is power and strength.

In most fiction there is only one type of dragon. Most commonly in the west it is a huge fire-breathing lizard with wings, often intelligent but cruel, always symbolic of power. Sometimes the greatest ruler will command a dragon or three, other times the heroes will consult a dragon to discover ancient wisdom and forbidden lore, and sometimes they will battle one to prove their prowess or outwit one to prove their intelligence.

But what about colour? In most fiction it makes no difference – there is only one type of dragon because no more than that is needed. In a few instances, however, dragons come in more than one colour, and you can tell a lot about the dragon by what colour its scales are.